Too much crap Black Metal for my liking. Yet no Cradle of Filth or Dimmu Borgir.

Where's the power metal or the groove metall? The Iced Earths, the Nevermores, the Panteras, the Machine Heads, the Fear Factories, the Children of Bodoms etc etc etc?

Some good stuff but too many ommissions and too much aforementioned shitty Black Metal. Hence most certainly not a list of essential albums.

Wow, I really hope you're kidding with this comment. If not I can only say the irony is baffling to me.

Yeah, this list surely is good. Would've liked it better with album covers though, but that's just a minor thing I dislike about it. But loads of great albums featured here, that's for sure.

Why would I be kidding?

For something that's labelled "90s: The Essentials" it misses out on a whole heap of stuff that most metal pundits would regard as essential and focuses too much on crap obscure Black Metal wholst ignoring key genres of the period (e.g. Groove and the Power Metal which hit a peak in late 1990s as well as large amount of pivotal DM albums from the early 1990s).

For something that's labelled "90s: The Essentials" it misses out on a whole heap of stuff that most metal pundits would regard as essential and focuses too much on crap obscure Black Metal wholst ignoring key genres of the period (e.g. Groove and the Power Metal which hit a peak in late 1990s as well as large amount of pivotal DM albums from the early 1990s).

Yeah, I guess you have a point seeing as "the essentials" indeed comes off as more objective than "my favourites", for example. Creating a general metal list of 90's essential albums, so covering all genres, is pretty much impossible. I can also easily name a ton of albums that I think belong on this list, but I previously judged the list on the albums it features. And there's simply lots of great stuff on here. So to sum it up: it's a great list, but calling it "the essentials" isn't the best title for this list, even if it's subjective.

For something that's labelled "90s: The Essentials" it misses out on a whole heap of stuff that most metal pundits would regard as essential and focuses too much on crap obscure Black Metal wholst ignoring key genres of the period (e.g. Groove and the Power Metal which hit a peak in late 1990s as well as large amount of pivotal DM albums from the early 1990s).

Yeah, I guess you have a point seeing as "the essentials" indeed comes off as more objective than "my favourites", for example. Creating a general metal list of 90's essential albums, so covering all genres, is pretty much impossible. I can also easily name a ton of albums that I think belong on this list, but I previously judged the list on the albums it features. And there's simply lots of great stuff on here. So to sum it up: it's a great list, but calling it "the essentials" isn't the best title for this list, even if it's subjective.

Missing Pantera from a list of "essentials of 90s" is like missing Metallica on a list of essentials of the 1980s.